


Two Things (Ficlet Collection)

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Crossover, Daemons, Gen, Headcanon, Hogwarts, Weasley Family Clock (Harry Potter), Worldbuilding, comic books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 17:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 5,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17288483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: A collection of ficlets written long ago from prompts of two things. This is specifically andonlythe HP portion of those.





	1. Dolores Umbridge + Teenage Years

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly headcanons. As a warning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/89806828015/dolores-umbridge-teenage-years).

Dolores was awkward as a teenager, is that surprising? Probably not. But she was.

She saw herself as something of a know-it-all, with every answer at her fingertips, neat and precise and  _correct_. She rather liked it when she was made prefect. She was something of a prude and wished she could use prefectorial powers to force people to act the same.

She would commandeer large swathes of the library during exam season, terrifying anyone who came near until the Head Boy or Girl came to kick her out.

During her N.E.W.T. year she starts wearing a pink hairband. No one notices how she smiles nervously at the Slytherin Prefect.

She never gets drunk with the other students and when the celebration in the Common Room gets so loud she cannot quiet them she flees the dungeons for a quiet classroom and cries.

Control and order are what she craves and she doesn’t ever have them, not her satisfaction at least.

Some of her classmates say something happened that night, but nothing did, nothing outside her own mind. When she returned that morning to shout into order her hungover housemates and had them march to breakfast in an orderly fashion it was because she  _wanted_  to.

And when, years later, her ambition and desire for control and order drove her up the Ministry ladder, that was because she wanted that, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	2. Minerva McGonagall + Being Headmistress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted over [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/89789454100/ok-ok-ok-ummmmm-mcgonagall-headmistress-ing)

Minerva found it hard to be headmistress. She’d never expected to take the position, even knowing Albus would likely die long before she. It simply hadn’t seemed  _possible_.

But it was.

It was odd to no longer be Head of Gryffindor, to no longer have to calm and control collectives of students. It was nice, though, she thought, and much less stressful.

It was harder not to teach. She loved to teach, to help people learn, to see the realisation in their eyes as they figured out as spell, their joy when it succeeded.

It was hardest to find a replacement. To give someone her old job, to name a new Head of Gryffindor, to make Filius deputy. It meant no going back.  _One day he may stand where I do_ , she thought, from behind the Heads desk, after telling Filius of her choice. _  
_

Once a replacement had been found things were easier, almost. Their spellwork was strong and they helped with the rebuilding of Hogwarts. Helping materials be found and find their places in the monumental school.  _It helped_ , Minerva mused, _that they can speak Mermish_.

Managing students from a distance she found, in the end, she preferred. It was quieter in her office without the constant noise and interruptions of students passing by outside and it allowed her time to work on the Transfiguration theories she’d developed as a teacher.

It  _hurt_  though, to stand where Albus, so much older than her, where Severus, so much younger, both, had stood.

But she stood, and she stood tall.

 _I will do my duty to my school_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	3. Sirius Black + Comic Books

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With a little Moony, for luck. Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/89784562320/sirius-black-comic-books-because-it-is-totally).

Sirius Black was first introduced to comic books by Remus, who had been given many by his muggle mother. He kept them with him at school because he liked the naive  _human_  hope they were filled with. When he felt horrible as the full moon drew near he would read them for comfort, curled up in his four poster, cross-legged, book on his lap. 

One evening Sirius joined him, say next to him with a quiet, oddly subdued “Whatcha up to Moony?”

Remus didn’t know then, that Sirius had just received an owl formally disowning him. Just that his friend looked sad and was asking what he was doing.

So he explained, explained how, while his friends being Animagi eased the actual transformation it never did anything for the sick feeling he got before it. How, because of this, he would read his mothers old comic books because their naive hope cheered him. He offered to lend a couple to Sirius and in a week or so Sirius had made his way through Remus’ entire stash.

When Sirius’ birthday came that year Remus borrowed Galleons from James and Peter and asked his mum to use the exchanged money to buy some comics for Sirius, the same series Sirius had lingered over, the same art styles where possible.

The Marauders had been worried for Sirius, who’d seemed slightly off, not explaining why but enough to worry them. 

When his face lit up at the sight of the huge box of comics they’d managed to get they were glad to see him happy again.

From then on Sirius dug into comics where ever and whenever he could. He liked the ones with clear Heroes and Villains most of all, the ones with happy endings, but as the war progressed he found himself looking more at the ones with less clear divides, with no right answer. He found it interesting to see the issues of the wixen world in the art and stories of muggles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments.


	4. Lyra Belacqua + Hogwarts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/89859313830/lyra-from-his-dark-materials-hogwarts).

_It is not like Oxford_ , she thinks when she first sees it, sailing across the lake. Hagrid has a boat to himself at the front of the flotilla, his daemon, a huge hound balancing at the fore. Lyra thinks she hears it called Fang, when Hagrid tugs his daemon back.

 _Its not at all like Oxford_ , she thinks as she gets closer, Pan changing from weasel, to jarvey, to dragon where he’s curled about her neck.  _There’s less roof to climb, but it is bigger_.

The sorting hat is odd she decides, but she is calmly sorted to Slytherin and at the scowls of some of her new housemates Pan changes into a snow leopard that would challenge even Stelmaria in size and fierceness. Her new housemates back off.

Her first lesson the next day is Transfiguration, and she’s surprised to learn the apparently daemonless Professor McGonagall is in fact her own daemon, somehow merged with Felix during an interesting magical experiment. Lyra suggests recreating it but it gives Pan the willies so they choose not to.

Professor Coulter taught them Potions later, her quick-fingered monkey daemon running around the desks, checking everyone’s brews. Pan didn’t much like him, but they did learn that Coulter was their head of house and resigned themselves to the fact.

It was several years before they managed to find the kitchens, manned by small strange daemonless beings. Or. Well.

Not daemonless per se. Their daemons seemed to pop in and out of existence, suddenly appearing as snakes or mice on the beings shoulders as needed. Mice, Lyra understood, so meek the creatures were, but snakes less so until Pan reminded her of the Roman belief in protective household snake spirits.

It was in her sixth year she met Iorek Byrnison, the Headmaster of Durmstrang.  _It was strange_ , she thought, _to see a panserbjørne manage wizards, but it was impressive_. She made many friends that year, and with them explored much of Hogwarts. At the end of that year Pan settled, at last, but they still explored the next year. Of  _course_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	5. Luna Lovegood + Social Justice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/89812563470/luna-lovegood-the-hogwarts-social-justice).

It started after the war.

Well.

Thats a lie.

It started before, when a housemate first called her “Looney”. Some might even trace it back further to the first injustices in society, but Luna was happy to say it started after the war and so what she said stood.

There were many after the war who demanded change.

The Lupin Laws did a lot to integrate werewolves into society, to end the perception of them as the monsters they were only once a month.

The Dobby’s Deed Foundation, set up by Harry Potter, worked with S.P.E.W. to protect house elves and to, where necessary, negotiate their freedom from untenable circumstances. House elves liked to work after all. They did not like to be punished.

Luna worked with Neville to rebuild Hogwarts, and, with him, made some changes during the process.

She knew, for example, that Ernie Macmillan had been hit by a back-breaking curse and barely survived but fully intended to return to redo his final year, use of his legs or no. Luna built ramps and slides into the stairs where she could, and invented a chute one could say ones destination into, enter and be flown through the school to ones destination.

Lavender was blind in her left eye now, Luna knew, so she put up large-lettered signs to direct students. After the first week of term with all students arriving on time the Professors wondered why it’d ever been any other way.

Dennis Creevey still froze up when he saw blue spells so Luna set her whole house to finding alternative spells to use, and a way of blocking such spells from Dennis’ sight

Hermione came to her and Neville to talk about muggle-born students with issues integrating into the magical world and students with trouble learning. Neville was the one who suggested an introductory course to the wixen world, and made a muttered comment about terrible teachers and terrible teaching and something which sounded like Snape.

Luna and Hermione asked Cho and Parvati and Padma if they’d help make a study group for students of all years, and ask Justin Finch-Fletchley and Daphne Greengrass to organise muggle-raised students and wixen-raised students into buddy-pairs so they could each learn about one another’s world.

It wasn’t much, at the time, and Luna planned to do much more. But until then, she thought, changing Hogwarts was as good a start as any.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	6. Bertha Jorkins + Rita Skeeter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/89808679625/bertha-jorkins-rita-skeeter).

Bertha Jorkins  _hated_  Rita Skeeter. Damn woman always knew how to make her blather on and on and accidentally spill secrets - to do with the Ministry and herself.

Terrible.

But she was fun in a way. From a distance, Bertha mused.  _Not_  up close.

She remembered Rita from school. A few years older, a few years wiser, always befriending the smartest and richest and most popular, and then spreading their gossip and secrets like fiendfyre to every corner of the castle.

Bertha remembered the Newsletter bomb Rita had let off in the Great Hall one supper time, detailing every scandalous fact about ever student Rita could get her grubby, ink-stained claws into.

It was a lot.

It included Bertha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	7. Hermione Granger + First Piece of Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/89862541910/hermione-granger-first-time-something-magical).

She was 8 years old and she’d just finished  _Matilda_.

She wished and wished and  _wished_  she had half was many books as Matilda had access to. She fell asleep wishing that.

The next days he found herself pulling books from the most unlikely places.  _Moby Dick_ from the breadbox,  _A Tale of Two Cities_  from behind the sofa cushions.  _The BFG_  from beneath her pillow.

The next day, finding her so engrossed in books after reading  _Matilda_  her father returned home with the  _Matilda_  film. _  
_

Hermione tried extra-hard to make things move with her mind after that.

Its why she found  _Wingardium Leviosa_  so easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	8. Lily Luna Potter + Childhood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/89863401585/lilly-lunas-childhood).

Was almost peaceful. Yes James could be an annoying prat but she got to go with her mother to talk to Quidditch players, she got a chance to ride the Thunderbolt V.

Aright, maybe peaceful wasn’t the word.  _Halcyon_  perhaps. When later she joined Hogwarts and found it too loud and chaotic she would remember perching in front of mum on the Thunderbolt V and how peaceful it was to get away.

At which point she stole James’ Nimbus 2500 and leapt off the Astronomy tower with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	9. Merope Gaunt + Her Whole Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/89866942305/meropes-whole-life).

Merope’s mother died birthing her and her grandmother raised her until she too passed away when Merope was fifteen.

All she had left was her mad father and her snake-speaking brother. Nothing she could call her own.

She got a wand when she turned eleven, at her grandmothers insistence, but though he grandmother taught her basic spellwork and how to make an assortment of potions on her death her father refused to help her, only deriding her efforts, and her brother scared her.

No wonder she chose to do as she did. Downtrodden, never having had a mother, grandmother dead, father dead, brother in Azkaban, husband gone. No wonder she died, the poor girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	10. Wixes + Daemons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/89999904590/wixen-daemons).
> 
> Please note that "wixes" is a gender neutral term for "witch or wizard".

_Harry_  wonders if he should have known from the start, when the huge man battered down the door and proclaimed him a wizard.

Hedwigs name had never been usual, really, and she’d never taken the normal forms. Where Dudley’s Gerald was always a fat rat, a languid python (less so after the incident at the zoo), even a  **sloth**  and Petunia’s Viola had always been an utterly ordinary Yorkshire Terrier and Vernon’s Marcus always a solid Staffie, Hedwig was more unconventional. _  
_

Snowy owl, pangolin, capuchin monkey, hummingbird, even, once, a strange multi-coloured tortoise that spat fire.

Harry thinks he should have known.

 _Neville_  never knew for certain. Trevor was a toad, most of the time. Hadn’t even settled but already he stuck to the same form.

It was only when Neville managed to land safely after a 20ft drop out a window and realised he felt no pained tug for Trevor that he thought he  **might**  have magic.

 _Luna_  had always known. Celeste had been a Crumple Horned Snorkack at her birth, she knew, and when a cat or owl or Nundu her eyes followed the Nargles. 

Luna had always known.

 _Hermione_  had never guessed. Crookshanks was always either a barn owl or a squashed-faced orange cat, reading over her shoulder. Nothing unusual.

Until the day the bookstack in her room collapsed on top of her and in his rush to tell her parents they realised there was no painful distance-tug, even when he went to the shed at the end of the garden.

Hermione did think that was a  **bit**  odd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	11. Fleur Delacour + Revolutions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90008114160/fleur-delacour-revolutions).
> 
> Please note I made the call to interpret revolution as a rotation, because that lets me talk about...

The Weasley Clock

Fleur was aware she hadn’t yet been given a hand on the Weasley family clock. It was after the war now, and Fred’s fallen hand was ever present at George’s neck.

Fleur was eight and a half months pregnant. She’d stood firm at Bill’s side during the war. She’d broken Molly’s expectations when Bill had been mauled.

And she still had no hand on the clock. She watched Bill’s hand swing from “travelling” to “home” as he stumbled out the Burrow’s fireplace, watched each hand turn from one designation to another, painfully aware she wasn’t granted a place on her husband’s family’s clock.

Fleur sighed and looked away from the clock, to her husband.

“Home?” he asked, holding out his hand.

“Oui, my love,” she said, hauling herself up, mingling languages as she trusted her child would learn to.

 

* * *

 

It was several weeks later, Bill out with his brothers, and Fleur nursing Victoire at the Burrow when she noticed it. 

Two new hands, shiny and bright, making their revolutions around the family clock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	12. Tom Riddle + Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90009579355/tom-riddle-love).

Whatever people might say  _Tom_  was capable of love. For a while anyway. Until he made his first Horcrux. He loved little Nagini, still growing, who would loop around his neck, he loved Hogwarts, he loved being prefect, and being respected.

He did  _not_  love love. In fact he hated it, hated watching his friends start to moon over others, losing all trace of actual personality. He decided love was childish, and that he never wanted it to happen to him.

So when he made his first Horcrux that was the part of his soul which he cut away and trapped. He could still  _feel_  it, sort of. He could still comprehend love. 

But it didn’t affect him any more.

When he came  _back_  however. That part of his soul had been destroyed then, sent on to  _“the next great adventure”_. He couldn’t even comprehend love anymore, in any form. Couldn’t even see it, let alone understand it.

No wonder he believed Narcissa’s desperate lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	13. Alecto Carrow + Years After Voldemort's Disappearance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90013350835/alecto-carrow-years-after-voldemorts).

_It wasn’t right_ , was her only thought.

How could a child live, and their Dark Lord vanish? What power did this - now also vanished, presumably to “safety” - child have?

But there was nothing to do. Whatever Bonkers Bella may claim their marks were dead on their arms, and their was no sign of their Lord.

Alecto didn’t much like it. It was  _too_  quiet, too calm, no Cruciatus screams, no reason for the masks.

Nothing.

‘til their marks burned again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	14. Mrs Granger + Returning From Australia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90064757815/how-about-mrs-granger-returning-from-australia).

There was no plane. 

The woman - Hermione -  _their daughter_  - had brought something called an “ _international portkey_ ” and after a few terrifying moments they were standing outside a house that her newly freed memories itched to recognise. _  
_

It wasn’t that cold but she still shivered that the persistent sensation of deja vu until her memories settled.

The woman -  _their daughter_  - led them into the house, showed them things matching memories perfectly.

It didn’t feel like home though, just as the woman -  _Hermione_  - didn’t feel like their daughter. _  
_

She wondered if it ever would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	15. Hogwarts House Elves + Looking After Students

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90149858315/hogwarts-house-elves-looking-after-students).
> 
> When this was requested it was asked that the ficlet pay especially attention to mental health.

There were quiet things done by the house elves, oh so quiet that the only ones who ever seemed to notice were those who needed the quiet things.

Small notes on students pillows letting them be aware of what food there was going to be the next day so they could gird themselves, Nutritional potions beside the pumpkin juice for those who had trouble keeping solids down, for whatever reason.

Cloaks and robes and scarves enchanted by the house elves own magic to always have the right texture, and stim toys in the common rooms, tucked among books and quills and parchment, always present and available.

House elves quietly suggesting to their (predominantly Hufflepuff) visitors that student X has seemed a little down of late and that perhaps some quiet company may help.

Students with a tendency to lose time or track of where and who they were being quietly assigned a follower house elf, ready to Apparate them away if things looked at all worrisome.

Books on school subjects with more accessible information slipped into bookbags and onto bedside tables when students seemed to be struggling.

House elves quietly making an effort to remove triggers from the paths of students before, during and after the war, and occasionally leaving trails to the Come-and-Go room, ready to be whatever the student Required - damaged or whole or something brand new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	16. Regulus Black + Lovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90150532915/regulus-black-lovers).

He was 18 when he died, only 18, still a child, still believing perhaps, that the world, that the Death Eaters, were not so deadly and dangerous as Sirius had always claimed.

Or perhaps he was all too aware, from the first moment the mark was pressed to his skin, and perhaps he sought to deny it to drown his mind in the flesh of others, nights not of lust but of desperation.

Nights wrapped in unfamiliar sheets, by unfamiliar people, pureblood, half-blood, mudblood, squib, it stopped mattering to him after a while, just wanting and seeking and finding something unrecognisable to lose himself in.

Kreacher wondered, once, for a moment, if Master Regulus ever realised how unrecognisable he himself became.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	17. Ginny Weasley + Seeing Hogwarts For The First Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90154769350/ginny-weasley-seeing-hogwarts-for-the-first).

She knew a few things about Hogwarts. Ron had assured her that, whatever the Twins might say she did  _not_  have to battle a troll to be sorted, though he refused to say what they  _did_  have to do  **and**  pointed out that he  _had_  faced down a troll  _as well_.

Percy and Charlie and Bill had told her stories of Hogwarts the castle, told her about the Gryffindor common room, and told her enough stories of finding classrooms for her to have a decent mental map of the place.

Fred and George had whispered to her where the kitchens were and Percy had told her all of the rules that she simply  _must_  obey, only for Fred and George to point out all the loopholes.

Platform 9 ¾ she knew, she’d been there every year she could remember to wave off her brothers and to pick them up again. The train was a novelty to her, though that quickly wore off when Percy dropped in to check on her.

But sailing across the lake it hit her that she’d never thought Hogwarts could possibly be so  _big_ _._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	18. Nymphadora Tonks + Music

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90165103165/tonks-and-music).
> 
> The Thriambics are the invention of TobermorianSass.

_Is this the real life?_   
_Is this just fantasy?_   
_Caught in a landslide,_   
_No escape from reality._

Despite what people might have thought Tonks’ taste in music was not Punk or muggle or for wizard rock or Celestina Warbecks crooning.

Rather, it was for everything.

The vinyls in her room covered everything, muggle and wixen alike, Beethoven, The Thriambics, Adam and the Ants, 4’33”, ABBA, the Hobgoblins, Queen. Most of her music  _was_  muggle, if only due to the sheer quantity of muggle artists. Her vinyls were usually gifts from her father, excepting the few that she got or transferred from muggle tapes and CDs herself.

She liked all of it, from [Stand and Deliver](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D4B2a6l6wM2k&t=OWIwMjM1MjdiNzY1MDNlMDc2MTdjZmRmMWY2YTNlYWEwMjgzZmQ1ZCxBYnZIVkludQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AxnSz38EpvLvnIYC4Z6nG9w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fessayofthoughts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F90165103165%2Ftonks-and-music&m=0) to [Mozart’s Lacrimosa](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dk1-TrAvp_xs&t=N2ZmNzhiOWI4NjFkMWQzYTQ1MzlmOGE1ZGNiNzBmMjExYWViMWE0NixBYnZIVkludQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AxnSz38EpvLvnIYC4Z6nG9w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fessayofthoughts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F90165103165%2Ftonks-and-music&m=0), even the eerie quiet of [4’33”](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DJTEFKFiXSx4&t=ZDg1ZGVhYjk0ZDI4NWM1OWY4ZGRhOTU5NDFmM2RkMjkwOWVlZWFlMyxBYnZIVkludQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AxnSz38EpvLvnIYC4Z6nG9w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fessayofthoughts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F90165103165%2Ftonks-and-music&m=0). Every one of them matched to some emotion, to some event, to some friend to her, and it was quite something to watch her hair and face change as she listened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	19. Muggle-Born + Refuses To Go To Hogwarts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90168186845/muggle-born-refuses-to-go-to-wizard-school).

“I’m  _not_  going, mum!” Isobel stamped her foot. “I don’t  _care_  if magic is real, all my friends are here! I don’t  _want_  to go!” _  
_

This had been going on for nearly an hour at this point, Isobel’s mother pointing out the benefits and Isobel stubbornly refusing. The strangely clothed woman, apparently a witch, sat quietly on the sofa, sipping the cup of tea Isobel’s mother had offered her.

Isobel’s mother slumped into an armchair at Isobel’s last outburst, and sighed deeply. She glanced to the witch. “Never have children,” she said, good naturedly, “If you haven’t already.”

The witch smiled, “Oh teaching put me off having children long ago,” she said. “Although I must say if your daughter refuses to go to Hogwarts or another magical school she will have to pick an alternative.”

Isobel kicked her heels against the sofa she was now sitting on and eyed the witch warily. “What kind of alternatives?”

“Total Obliviation of the magical secret,” the witch said blandly, stirring her tea. “You’ll be magically made to forget everything you’ve ever heard, learned or figured out about magic, as well as having you magic bound from ever being expressed.”

Isobel shook her dark head vehemently, pigtails flying. “No.”

“Then you must be homeschooled for 6 hours on Saturdays and 4 on Sundays, every weekend of the year, even in the holidays, for the seven years of magical education you’d otherwise undergo." 

Isobel looked set to refuse this too, before the witch spoke again. “Its one or the other. Have all awareness and ability for magic locked away or accept some form of teaching to control it.”

Isobel frowned. “Homeschooling then.”

The witch nodded and pulled a rolled up piece of parchment from her pocket and passed it to Isobel’s mother.

"In which case you’ll need to pick out a teacher and fill out some considerable paperwork,” she said.

Isobel’s mother let out a long-suffering sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	20. Fred & George Weasley + Seeing Hogwarts For The First Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90171998245/fredgeorge-weasley-first-hogwarts-impressions).

“ _Wow_ ,” said George, as the boats floated across the lake.

“It's  _huge_ ,” offered Fred.

The twins glanced to one another, grinning widely. “We’re going to get  ** _so_**  lost.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	21. Minerva McGonagall + War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/90203776075/mcgonagall-war).

She remembers the first war, when Potter reappears with the cup and a corpse. She remembers the deaths, whole family branches disappearing in single fell swoops, she remembers the eerie green mark over house and house and house and —

 _ **Stop.**  Pause. Process_. Do not dwell on what was done. Prepare in the present. Focus on the future.

She remembers the McKinnons when Amelia Bones is killed. That same, silent, certain execution of action, dead bodies left where the few remaining relations can realise what was done and who by. She remembers walking into the house, led by Alastor to see body after body after body and her ex-student curled so small against the wall, legs and arms at impossible angles, skin torn, her  _eyes_  —

 ** _Stop_. Pause.**  **Process.**  Don’t dwell. Prepare. Focus. 

She remembers the stories of Grindelwalds defeat at Dumbledore’s hands when the Daily Prophet doesn’t deny the Death Eaters attack on the Department of Mysteries. She remembers the disappearance of Peter, a mirror to the death of the much dearer Sirius.  _No parents, aunt hates him, godfather gone, what will become of Potter?_

_Stop. Pause. Process. Focus._

She remembers Lily and James when she sees Dumbledore dead at the hands of Death Eaters. She remembers the news, and how, even tempered with the good of Voldemorts supposed death, how everything  _crystalised_  around it.

_**Stop.**  Focus._

There is nothing she remembers when the Death Eaters come to attack. She has no comparison to help her cope. So she creates order from chaos, calls students to safety and battle stations, she stands in Dumbledore’s place at the fore of the Great Hall and prepares.

_Piertotum Locomotor._

The battle is horrible, brutal, bloody. Even magic goes Berserk and rips people limb from limb, in a fearfully expressed spasm of terror. It is a battlefield, and her robes rip, her arms ache as she casts hex after curse after every other spell she can think to cast.  _Horrida bella_ , she thinks, recalling her fathers Virgil.  _Horrible war_. Horrible war indeed.

_Stop. Pause. Focus._

The war is over. Dark Lord Dead. Death Eaters damaged, dying, dead, or disappeared. They’ve won.

Her eyes scan the Great Hall, flicker over every dead - one Weasley twin, the elder Creevey boy, Tonks and Remus, and student after student after student, children all.

_Pause. Focus._

This end of the war is different. He  _is_  dead. Their dead can be buried with less chance of a Death Eater interrupting the service. Voldemort’s Generals were dead or petrified or so injured that action against them was futile.

The sun was rising, illuminating the Great Hall and Minerva McGonagall paused, relaxed, refocussed.

_The war was **over.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/92137212665/regulus-black-drugs).
> 
> I personally headcanon that drugs in the magical world are largely complicated psychoactive potions or medicinal potions being used for something other than their intended purpose, with the exception of the carefully and occasionally brain-melty Fairy Dust which TobermorianSass and I have discussed many times. With that in mind…

Fairy dust, the good stuff, was one of few things that worked when it came to keeping oneself from dwelling on the atrocities committed in the name of purity.

Though, to be honest, it was probably what had got him caught up in the whole bloody mess anyway, he mused, watching a firecrab float up to the ceiling, startling some balls of light out of the way.

One evening, one winter, fairy dust and firewhiskey and making the inadvisable agreement to serve the Dark Lord. Regulus wanted to punch himself. But now the madmans mark was embedded in his flesh and each day he was expected to torture muggles and  _laugh_  and  _enjoy it_.

Muggles may be lesser, he’d realised then, but nobody deserves this.

Time after time he’d been tempted to turn the curse to Bellatrix or to Rabastan or Avery or Malfoy. And time after time he kept his wand on the screaming, pleading muggle who didn’t even understand what was happening or why.

 _Coward_  his mind whispered.  _Slippery snake slithering on your belly and avoiding striking those who deserve it, coward, cur, yellow-belly._  Incidentally, a yellow-bellied serpent was crawling across the floor towards him. Regulus nudged it with his toe and watched as the creature struck his boot with crimson fangs.

He took more fairy dust. Swallowed it down, liquidised and injected it like muggles did, snorted it. Anything to stop seeing the muggles confused and pleading faces.

He’d never wanted this he realised. He’d wanted to be part of something like how Sirius was part of his group of friends. And instead he was a servant, soldier, slave, almost a golem told what to do expected to do it without incident. In the corner a clay form, akin to a gingerbread man, tried to climb the damask wallpaper.

He couldn’t do this he realised. Not anymore. He watched the spiralling colours, the firecrab on the ceiling, the reverse centaur stumbling around, the floating green fairy things he’d nicknamed  _gargles_  after they appeared in every trip.

He stood, rocking slightly, disorientated, but he stood. A  _gargle_  flew near his face, he was pretty sure another settled on his shoulder. He slumped back into the chair, the  _gargle_  flying up and gently tapping at his face, its tiny, sharp-toothed face worried.

“I need to get out,” he croaked to the possibly-imaginary- _gargle_. “He needs to stop.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	23. The Black Sisters + Sorting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/101588527795/the-black-sisters-sorting)>

**Bellatrix - The Amazon Star**

Bellatrix was first and there was no doubt as she sat down where she was going to go. She was cunning then, and it was the family house how could she go elsewhere?

She wanted that cunning and she wanted to be great, to be noted, tall she stood, even before she had height, and noble she looked, even before she truly understood what it meant to be noble (if, her sister said, she ever indeed truly understand what the world meant. Nobility was not just blood after all.) The warrior went to Slytherin.

**Andromeda - The One Wrongly Punished**

Andromeda knew what was expected of her, knew she had to go to the house of her forefathers. She did not, truly enough,  _want_  anything else. 

Sometimes things might niggle. Sweeping generalisations made by her mother, by her aunt, but truly enough she could not yet see  _why_  they felt so false. And so she accepted them, and so, she went to Slytherin.

**Narcissa - The Beauteous One**

The youngest of them all, what could she do but follow their lead? That was what she said to those she met on the train, those she smiled to sweetly. She was paler than her sisters, a fey pale thing, pure as snow, pure as her blood. She knew this.

Make friends, she believed, was the best course of action. Whatever house she  _did_ end up in, and yes she considered she might not be sorted as her sisters, having friends would ease it. And if she  _was_ sorted into Slytherin what better way of maintaining power, than friends elsewhere?

Thus the flower became the serpent under it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	24. Draco Malfoy + First Time Experiencing The Muggle World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/104538590870/draco-malfoy-experiencing-the-muggle-world-for).

At first its hard. He didn’t want to learn about the muggles, they were  **beneath**  him, they were  **lesser**.

But he had to, his mother insisted, insisted that he learn what the Boy Who Lived had seen as so important to protect in these people.

He liked some things about it. Muggle food was different, especially fast food, but he hated the gristle that came in the “burgers”, just as much as he loved the salt of their “chips”. Muggle cinema was interesting, and he quickly started to note down ideas to take to artificers about bringing such a thing into the magical world.

Their sheer  **number**  he found fascinating, so many people, talking, moving, simply  **living**  and  **breathing**  and sometimes it made him quite small, to realise so much more existed outside his doorstep, if only he’d thought to venture there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


End file.
